Sen. McConnell Issues Statement on Health Care

WASHINGTON, Oct. 12 -- Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, issued the following statement, which was published in the Congressional Record on Oct. 10, on health care:

Mr. President, on another matter, today the Senate will also vote on an effort by my Democratic colleagues to strip away health insurance options for families whom ObamaCare has failed.

The first 4 years of the ObamaCare experience was one of failure after failure--skyrocketing premiums and broken websites built on broken promises. Many families were caught right in the middle of the ObamaCare mess--those who earned too much to receive subsidies but not enough to keep pace with premiums--so it became even more important to look for alternatives. The American people are resourceful. Some held on to so-called grandfathered and grandmothered plans, and others looked for lower cost, short-term plans that could be held for up to a year.

We all know that Big Government doesn't like it when citizens try to avoid the micromanagement and run their own lives as they see fit, so in the waning months of the Obama administration, Democrats issued a new regulation that cut these plans from 12 months down to 3 months and made them nonrenewable. I guess the goal was to force even more Americans into ObamaCare. The real effect was just to punish these people twice for Democrats' bad policy.

Fortunately, this year the Trump administration righted the ship. They undid the restriction and restored the status quo that was in place from the 1990s through most of the Obama administration. It was a simple fix. It doesn't take away the choices they have under ObamaCare but empowers Americans to use this alternative choice if they prefer it. According to even the liberal Urban Institute, more than 1.7 million Americans will likely be insured with this option, who otherwise would have gone uninsured. But apparently our Democratic colleagues can't tolerate even this modest step away from top-down government control. They have introduced a resolution of disapproval to overturn the Trump administration's fix and snatch these options away from families once more. We will be voting on it today.

I know my Democratic colleagues are embarrassed by the state of ObamaCare. It has been more than 8 years since they passed their signature law that was supposed to make it all better. Instead, working Americans are saddled with increasing costs and decreasing choices. But surely they must have a better answer than snatching away one of the remaining options that some Americans still prefer to anything Democrats have been able to come up with.

This is an easy decision. I urge every one of my colleagues to vote against this resolution. Our constituents deserve more options, not fewer. The last thing we should do is destroy one of the options that is still actually working for American families.